Chet Lacey- Private Investigator by Robert Sidney Bowen

Book Details

Chet Lacey- Private Investigator – Five stories of the cases of Private Detective Chet Lacey. He finds murder, blackmail, and the seamy side of life even in the “nicest” parts of society.

Let Me Kill You Tenderly (1946) – When Death Strikes, Detective Chet Lacey Heeds the Siren Call of Duty—but Not the Call of a Siren!
Chapter I Beauty and the Beast
Chapter II Dear, Sweet Robert
Chapter III Too Tough to Die
Chapter IV Watch the Birdie!

Till Death Do Us Part (1946) – Two wealthy sisters run into a nightmare of trouble when a scheming husband dishes up a murder and blackmail stew, and it’s up to private detective Lacey to serve the solution!
Chapter I Corpse in the Desk Chair
Chapter II Miss Heavenly of the Year
Chapter III Two Murders
Chapter IV The Wrong Sister
Chapter V Three Million Beautiful Smackers
Chapter VI “I Can Hope, Can’t I?”

Darling, You Shouldn’t Have! (1947) – Mrs. Roger Fenimore was pretty as a picture, and Sleuth Lacey found her in a murder frame!

Death Has No Love-life (1947) – The baffling murder of the mystery girl in blue starts Chet Lacey unraveling a sinister pattern of crime traced in crimson—and hurls him into a welter of fast action!
Chapter I Blonde In Distress
Chapter II Frightened Playboy
Chapter III Missing Suspect
Chapter IV Forced Ride
Chapter V Killer’s Gun

You Wake Up Dead! (1947) – When bootblack Tony gets polished off while on an errand, a private eye sets out to avenge him and suddenly finds himself square in the middle of a murderous racket!
Chapter I Tony Pays the Price
Chapter II Glamour Girl
Chapter III Turnabout
Chapter IV Fugitive Father
Chapter V Bullets for a Pay-Off

Robert Sidney Bowen, Jr. (1900–1977) was a World War I aviator, newspaper journalist, magazine editor and author. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and died of cancer in Honolulu, Hawaii. He is best known for his boys’ series books written during World War II, the Dave Dawson War Adventure Series and the Red Randall Series.

Chet Lacey- Private Investigator has 29 illustrations.

Files:

1. ChetLacey.epub

Excerpt: Let Me Kill You Tenderly

Chapter I

Beauty and the Beast

FOR the first time in quite a spell the bank balance was what I’d often dreamed it might be, and the season for going to Mexico City was just beginning. Everything was exactly as it should be. Money, time, plans, and expectations.

And then my office phone bell jangled. The throaty, honey-coated voice that poured into my ear belonged to Vivian Ames. She was Mrs. Kenneth R. Ames, wife of our biggest bank’s president. But there had been a time when she had been just Vivian Murphy, Senior Four, Bedford High, with me, and definitely priority cup-cake in my life.

Truth to tell, she still was in that little special part of my brain I set aside for memories, for though Viv had four-alarm-fire blood in her veins, it was pumped straight from the ice-house that was her heart. And the ideas she began to get around the age of ten had never included me.

“Chet!” the throaty voice said over the phone. “Come out right away, will you, darling? I’m in terrible trouble!”

Five years, if it was a day, since I had heard that voice. And it did things to me. But not as much as Viv had probably expected it would.

“Hello, Viv,” I said. “Trouble? Dial the operator and say, ‘I want a policeman.’ “

“Chet, please! I’ve got to talk to someone. Someone I can trust! . . . Well, you know what I mean.”

My laugh stopped her. We were both thinking of those moonlight drives, years ago.

“Chet Lacey, I could kill you! Please! I’m serious. I’ve got to see you. Something awful has happened. I can’t tell you over the phone. Please, Chet. Twenty minutes?”

I laughed again. Not at her. At me, for the times she had make a sucker out of me. And the extra time she was making a sucker out of me now. Anyway, I was too top-of-the-world to bother battling temptation.

“Okay, lovely,” I said. “For you I’ll make it in fifteen minutes. But I’ll be thirsty.”

“You always were, darling,” she said, and hung up.

Fifteen minutes exactly had passed when I came to the end of the half-mile blue stone driveway of the Kenneth R. Ames domicile, a cozy little place of forty or fifty rooms. I had been there a couple of times before and had darned near broken my neck falling over the small army of servants.

THIS day, though, there was nary a one. Vivian in trailing, diaphanous silk that clung to her, answered the door, and five years of trying to forget her went up in smoke.

I won’t try to describe what she looked like, standing there with one hand on the door, and the other reaching out to me. When it caught mine, the electricity went clear up my arm into my neck.

“Chet, I’m so glad you’re here!”

Then she was drawing me inside and closing the door. Not until then did I see the tears in her eyes. She squeezed my hand tighter, and smart, smart me went right overboard.

“What’s the matter, sweet?” I asked. And somehow her head was suddenly against my chest. “No trouble is ever that bad, baby.” She suddenly straightened up, let go of my hand, and her smile went over me like moonlit Miami surf.

“I’m sorry, Chet,” she said. “I can be such a fool. Come along and have a cocktail first.” The room into which she led me was about right for the Ringling Brothers, but the little corner alcove where she finally stopped was perfect. A divan strictly for two, cobbler’s bench table, solid silver cocktail shaker and glasses.

I really was thirsty, and that shaker contained just what I wanted. We touched glasses in silent toast, and downed the first one. I poured a second, then settled back on the cushions.

“All right, Mrs. Ames,” I said, “what’s all the trouble?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, and I didn’t prompt the answer. Vivian Murphy Ames never ever gave anything away for nothing. Not even a cocktail. And the first one had moved me into the cagey stage. Of course, with several more I might move to another stage, but right now I was slowing up my dive overboard.

“Chet, for once it isn’t about me,” she said, “and the way she said it would have made strong men weep. I didn’t, but I did turn and look at her. Her lips were two inches away, and I covered them with mine.

“Okay, sorry, lovely,” I said then. “Tell me about it.”

“You still do—a little, don’t you?” she whispered. “Oh, Chet!”

Funny, but that was suddenly the wrong side of the record. Anyway it made me go the noble and honorable guy.

“The name is Kenneth R. Ames,” I said. “And I think he’s a very swell egg.”

That was true. I’d always liked Ken Ames a lot. I guess that’s why I wasn’t too sore when Viv kicked Cloud Nine out from under me and married Ken. Noble I was, and way off base for what was to come.

“Kenneth Ames is a fool!” she hissed. “A despicable one at that. I loathe the very thought of him. But—but I am helpless. Chet, you must do something!”

I looked at her with my best blank and puzzled look.

“For instance?” I asked.

“Find Kenneth!” she said “At once before everything is ruined!”

“Huh?” I echoed. “Me find Ken?” You mean he’s missing?”

“Since this noon,” she said. “Look at this. An hour after Kenneth left to go back to the bank—about one-thirty—I found this stuck under the front door.”

“This” was a sheet of paper she took from a pocket of her house-coat and held out for me to read. The words were made up of individual letters cut from newspaper headings and read:

AMES SAFE UNHARMED. HAVE FIFTY THOUSAND SMALL BILLS READY. INSTRUCTIONS LATER. GOING TO POLICE WILL BE KNOWN.

Suddenly I recognized the type style. It was the heads’ style used by our local Bedford Financial Journal. A paper that all Bedford bankers would subscribe to!

I turned my head to look at Viv. All the emotions possible in a woman showed in her beautiful face. I didn’t know whether she was going to scream with rage, or burst into tears, or what. Impulsively I put a hand on her knee.

“Take it easy, Viv,” I said. “Maybe there’s something wrong here.”

“I’ll say there’s something wrong!” she said in that throaty voice of hers, but without honey coating this time. “This!”

She reached behind one of the cushions and pulled out a newspaper. It was a copy of the Bedford Financial Journal, and missing from the column heads on the first page were the letters that made up the kidnaping note.

MY INSTANT reaction, of course, was that if Ken Ames had kidnaped himself, he hadn’t been very smart to use letters cut from his own copy of the Financial Journal.

“Where’d you find this?” I asked.

“Upstairs in his study,” she said. “It was on the floor by the waste-basket and I saw that it had been clipped. I didn’t know why, until I got the note.”

“What happened to your servants, Viv?” I asked.

“I guess I’d better begin at the beginning,” she said.

The way she said it made me look at her. Sweet and soft, and in trouble. The old, old combination. The devil with the lady’s husband! I kissed her again. Hard. The gallant, sympathetic guy, Chet Lacey!

Excerpt From: Robert Sidney Bowen. “Chet Lacey– Private Investigator.”